Swing Set Insanity

We've been dreaming of getting the kids a swingset for about a year now.  Luckily, the government gave us some of our money back (thank you tax return) and we were able to splurge for one (thank you Sam's Club).

We looked forward to the day of purchase for quite some time.  For some reason we decided to do it on a Friday RIGHT after Daddy got off work, and RIGHT before Grandma Bell came up to visit for Conference weekend.  Oh yeah, and it was April which means forecasted rain for 95% of the available days we had to set it up.  What were we thinking?  Oh yeah, we weren't.  I often live vicariously through my kiddos and this purchase was no exception.  I was a giddy little school girl dreaming about watching them play on it while I relaxed on the lawn chair in the back yard.  I just didn't realize it would take two weeks before I could live that dream.  Two weeks of late evenings, day prepping supplies, and building a huge apparatus with two kids hanging off of us and wanting to be in everything we did.

Grandma Bell did provide lots of support when it came to entertaining the kids for those first two days.  We also only worked in two hour increments since it was conference weekend and we wanted to catch those sessions....or a quick nap DURING those sessions...whoopsie!

The rest of the set-up stretched out over the remaining two weeks.  Actually, it was pretty fun putting it together.  It allowed my OCD tendencies to surface and I was able to basically instruct John on what piece of wood went where and with what screw and bam....he screwed it in.  He was the physical labor, I was the mental labor.  We made very few mistakes if you must know.  However, the tricky part was trying to be a Mother to the kids during the process.  Jonas fell off the trampoline more times than I'd like to admit and also splashed in the mud the same amount of times as well.  But, they've both mastered raising themselves (for the most part) in the backyard and that is a huge blessing in disguise.  

And the end results?  Beautiful.  Gorgeous.  Done. Finally.  It was worth it to see the smiles on their faces.  Poor Addison was losing patience with the process since she knew what the end result was.  Jonas probably just figured Daddy and I were playing with sticks for two weeks straight so he had no patience to lose.  Every day I had to reassure Addison that it would indeed get finished....but not that particular day.  Thankfully the day came and they loved it.  We still go out and play on it almost daily...weather permitting.  And if/when we ever move from this house, this thing is coming with us.  I see happy days in the hot sun with a pregnant Momma in our future.  Yay for swing sets!

The start of the process.  This was the beginning of chaos.  Luckily my OCD tendencies shined through and I was able to organize all these parts after two days of digging to find what we needed and where.

Making heads and tails of the instruction manual.  It wasn't too difficult to figure out...thankfully.

Happy kids on a finished swing set.  We were smiling just as big...trust me!

These people aren't as cute as us obviously but this is the only "full photo" I could find of the finished product.  Thankful our finished product looks ALMOST like this one!  ;o)